Category: fitness

Listen to Scott Abel (one of the smartest guys in the industry) on this:

I want them to know that coaching is essential to optimal results. Information does not equal expertise. There is an incredible amount of information about training and diet available online these days, yet there are more trainers and coaches than ever.

If optimizing physical results was as easy as reading about it online, coaches and trainers would be out of jobs. Coaching is oversight; it is knowing what an individual needs when they need it. Like I always say in my seminars, I can have the most fuel efficient and best maintained car on the road, but if my destination is Florida and I head North then it doesn’t matter what the vehicle’s potential is, I will never reach my destination (goal).

Too many trainees think they are heading in the right direction, but aren’t. If they only understood the value of applied expertise, they could save themselves a lot of time and money with respect to reaching their physical goals.

You can actually do many of the workouts you see posted on Youtube!

For example, here’s a video I did for the STX:

If you want to do this workout, take a pen and paper (or better yet, a notebook you use to write down ALL your workouts), and write down what I’m doing as I do it. I even put the reps in there so you don’t have to count. Sometimes you will depending on the person who put up the video.

Then you take the workout you’ve written down with you to the gym or place you workout and do the workout as done in the video. I actually filmed the one above so you could download it to your mobile phone and have the video with you at all times.

As a studio owner and fitness equipment seller, one of the most frustrating comments I get is “I don’t know what to do with it” or “I don’t know what to do today.” To answer these types of questions, I often post sample workouts but people don’t seem to realize they can actually do the workout I post.

I don’t post as many workouts as other trainers because I don’t think you need to do something completely different every single day. I would recommend a set of workouts (hint, hint: STX upper body, STX lower body, STX core for example) that are done seriously and often to get the best results.

Take a little initiative and get going!

“You’re still doing the kettlebell?!? That’s so last week! We’re doing the TRX blast straps 9000 now. This thing will really kill your core.”

You see it all the time in the fitness industry — a new product comes out and people jump all over it like THIS TIME it will really get them results. You know, just like the other 99 products they have in the closet that were supposed to do the same thing.

The principle of “a mile wide and an inch deep” really applies here.

People do this stuff because they are weak. The products were designed by weak people, are marketed by weak people, and are sold by weak people. If you buy them, guess what? You will remain weak yourself.

Don’t let the ad fool you — they didn’t get to look like that by doing that gadget.

Keeping you weak is a HUGE part of the fitness industry. Why? Because if you stay weak, you won’t get results, and if you don’t get results you will buy the latest crap that promises results! Clever, isn’t it?

So it’s BOSU ball this week, VIPR next week, tiny kettlebells the week after, etc. If all these tools are so great then why aren’t the people who preach about them using them a year later? A. because they were worthless to begin with, B. there was no depth to the product or the programming behind it.

If you fall pray to these products then ask yourself this question — why do you do this and when are you going to change?

I’ve wanted to do weighted dips for the longest time but based on my dips with bodyweight, I figured I wasn’t ready. Dips are a great way to build upper body pushing strength and I normally do 5 sets of 10-12 reps and i’ve been doing that for a while. I wasn’t really improving but maybe i wasn’t paying attention?

Yesterday I said what the heck and just tried weighted dips after I did one body weight set. I used 12kg and got 10 solid reps. What?! I thought I wasn’t ready for these? Let’s try that again.

I grabbed a 16kg kettlebell, strapped it on, and did how may reps? 10 solid. What the heck?

At this point, I’m wondering where this is going so I continued with the 20kg. How many? 10.

I grabbed the 24kg. At this point I had done 4 sets already with more than I’d ever dipped before. So how many did I get on the 5th set with 24kg? 10!

I could have tried 28kg but I stuck with 24kg and got 8, 7, 6, 4 on my last sets so I was a happy camper. That’s dipping 108kg (my body weight plus 24kg) for five whole sets!

The point of this is that I was likely limiting myself in my head to 10 reps. If you tell yourself you will do 10, then that’s all you will do. Your mind will tell your body to start shutting down around 8. It’s like when you have to go to the bathroom and the pressure increases the closer you get to the bathroom.

You might be self-limiting like this and not even know it. If you don’t push yourself in different ways and experiment, then you’ll never know. One thing is for sure, I’ll never limit myself to bodyweight dips again. I just multiplied the effect of that exercise immensely by pushing that boundary.

Try it out and something you’ve been doing as a routine and see how it works!

On a forum recently, people were saying how a certain trainer that manages to keep under 10% body fat year round has a mental problem. The mental problem is body dismorphia or some other garbage made up to describe people we are jealous of. The initial response was “oh yeah, but he isn’t strong” but then video of him pulling a lot of weight was shown. So then some other excuse had to be found and it was. Ahhhhhh, we can feel safe and sound in our fatness now because even though that guy has constant leanness and is strong, he’s crazy. And we’re not, I guess. Love that security blanket.

The fact of the matter is no matter what you’re successful at, it will be considered a complete failure by some folks. The lean trainer succeeded at being lean but according to others he’s simply mentally unhinged so he failed in that category.  If you ever succeed in any way then you will be very surprised at this. This will completely blindside you. You will expect your success to be obvious but not only will it not be, it will become a point of derision to others. Trust me, this won’t be comfortable if you choose to pay attention to it.

In the fitness realm, you might choose to become muscular so then you’ll be labeled a musclehead. If you become lean, then you’re “too lean” and obsessed with how you look. One smartass once said to a bodybuilder, “What’s it like being all brawn and no brains?” The bodybuilder looked at the guy and said, “I don’t know. What’s it like being neither?”

That should be your response.